Part 12: Nar Shaddaa: Does a Butterfly Flapping its Wings Cause Thugs to Fall into a Pit?

So we've finally arrived on Nar Shaddaa, and we have two main goals.

First, we have to figure out who and why someone put a huge bounty on Jesus's head.

Second, we have to find this guy:



By request, here's the Dark Side version of the 2nd refugee quest.





"Five credits for a beggar? Who do I look like, Paul Allen? Well, actually I do kind of look like Paul Allen."





Kreia doesn't approve this time either.

"These small acts of cruelty bore me - to take money from others, to insult them, to threaten their lives."
"And what would you rather do?"
"I command the Force, and yet these small cruelties are all life presents me with."



"But in the end, nothing is gained by it."
"Indeed? Listen - feel the echo."











Basically, being an asshole to people MAKES people assholes.



Our lesson learnt:

1) Don't give hobos money.
2) Don't threaten to kill hobos.

Time to reload and talk to the next guy:



Ah shit. This is a test, isn't it?

Kreia!

We can make him work for his money; that way Kreia won't get pissed, right?




"Uh, all right... I don't know much beyond the Refugee Sector here, but I can share what I know."
"This sector's filled with refugees from the Jedi Civil War, and even as far back as the Mandalorian Wars. Refugees and war veterans both... and anyone else who was rendered homeless by the war. The Jedi destroyed planets across the galaxy, and here's where the wreckage ended up."
"The Jedi didn't do this... the Sith did."
"That's two names for one thing. It's difficult to tell in the crossfire, and the Sith were led by Jedi. In the end, it didn't make much difference."







As soon as we turn the corner, this guy is pawning us off to a bounty hunter. Kreia was right about charity .





This is the Refugee Sector landing area. The drawings above are pretty much dead accurate. There's people milling around, a cantina and a pazaak den, and a swoop garage, which we'll all get to in a bit.



We run across this guy being shaken down by the Exchange. The Exchange were like the mob in KOTOR 1, more elite than normal thugs, but they've been sort of transformed into the generic non-Sith antagonists here.







Who does he think he is, Saemon Havarian?





"How much does he owe?"





Fine, whatever, let's help out a fellow person in need.

We're all in this life together, y'know?





"You don't need to pay me anything. You're free to go on your way."



Hey, no problem. Glad to help!



Don't you get a warm fuzzy feeling from that?

I know I do.

No?

What's wrong?



You want blood, don't you?



...

Fine, I'll reload.









That's the line that makes me laugh. Every single time.







What's amusing is this triggers a Light Side reaction from Atton, because we 'saved' that refugee.





From his dialog, you'd think you lost influence with Atton, but Atton is weird like that. If you save people, he likes it, if you murder people, he likes it too. He's got issues.







"I am surprised you can feel it. I feared the damage to you had deadened you to such perceptions."
"What you feel is the echo of the minds of these creatures within the Force. Their anger... their greed... their desperation. It is life."
"But the anger and desperation... is there some way to heal it?"
"One might as well heal the universe... but such manipulation is possible, yes."









It may be hard to understand what Kreia is talking about sometimes, but there's a good reason for that. She's talking about her core beliefs, but at the same time she's basically rambling on about mathematical Chaos Theory.



To put it simply, every time she says something about 'sending echoes through in the Force', she's talking about the Butterfly Effect, one of the properties of a chaotic system.

You know the whole Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? thing? That's all there is to it. It's presented in a philosophical sense through Kreia's lines, but it's really just math.

When she talks about pushing events along to make echoes in the Force, and to create a predetermined outcome: this is also consistent with Chaos Theory. The word 'chaos' is a bit misleading because the systems are deterministic, meaning there's still order in the events that happen. So if you know what could happen, then like Kreia says, it's possible to trigger the correct flap of the butterfly's wings to created a result.



I could be just talking shit, but the concept of determinism has come up again and again in Obsidian/Black Isle's games. It fits too well to be a coincidence.

So there you have it, applied mathematics in a Star Wars game.



The whole 'open your mind' talk gives us a Force bonus.



There's this Trandoshan sulking in the corner here, let's talk to him.



"Is that a threat?"
"I am Vossk, once of the bounty hunter's guild, now no longer. You have nothing to fear from me. I hunt no longer, the scent no longer drives me. The guild has killed it, as sure as they have killed their pledges and their oaths."
"You make it sound like the guild has laws."
"A contract is honored, and they are not to attack each other if they are chasing the same prey."
"So if they were all hunting one person, they couldn't attack each other?"
"Yes... and that is why the smuggler's moon has become quieter in the past months. They all hunt Jeedai... and they all hunt uselessly. Someone is playing them for fools."



We can ask about all the bounty hunters we say earlier talking to Goto.











Handmaiden has a great, subtle eye-rolling animation I can't sufficiently capture in a screenshot.













We saw her earlier.



I've mentioned this earlier but the major piece of cut subplot on Nar Shaddaa is the Genoharadan story. The Genoharadan were a bunch of fanatical assassins we first met in KOTOR 1. The Batu Rem stuff on Telos, the visit from Darth Sion to Nar Shaddaa, it all comes back to the Genoharadan.

The fake Batu Rem assassin was the guy who tried to attack us in the jail cells back on Telos. If you ask around the docking bay about where the assassin arrived from, you'll find out he came from Nar Shaddaa. That's where the quest ends, but what was cut was the ability to follow the trail back here, to Nar Shaddaa, to find out that he was a Genoharadan assassin.

"The smuggler's moon is home to two tribes - one are the bounty hunters, and the other are the more secretive ones. I fear the belief of one has slowly infected the other. These hidden ones, the not bounty hunters, are the ones that worship death - the GenoHaradan. Speak their name quietly."
"Their base is here?"
"The GenoHaradan assassins are here, yes - you can feel them in the currents of the smuggler's moon. There is a quiet bloodlust beneath the vents. They shift their base throughout the galaxy, but I feel as if they are here, somewhere... I can feel their presence close, always, but I do not know where they have concealed themselves."
"If you don't know where they are, how can I find them?"
"Do not seek them out - they will come to you, when they know of your presence. They are said to hunt Jeedai as the bounty hunter's guild does, but to kill them, not capture them."
"I fear they have already corrupted many to their cause, many of the bounty hunters I once served with... but I am not sure who."
"If the bounty hunters know I'm here, then the GenoHaradan should know soon enough."
"Perhaps... they are difficult to predict. I suspect that many of their eyes are traveling the galaxy looking for Jeedai, only to leave them blind here on the smuggler's moon."
"Then if I can bring the bounty hunters to me, the GenoHaradan should follow."
"With one beast follows another - it is a dangerous game, human. But if you wish to pretend to be prey, you may be successful. It would please me to see those who follow death so willingly die instead of their victims."

This guy had more lines cut. At one point you were suppose to be able to talk to him and ask how much your bounty is; the higher the price, the more the Exchange want your head. But I think that got removed and was moved to another NPC.





Hey, this guys sounds friendly.











The first compartment was the subject of a sidequest in KOTOR 1, where Revan ended up getting trapped in the white Matrix along with a crazy alien, and... well, nevermind.







What would Jesus do? Well, this guy just sounds completely legit, so we must do the right thing and return our stolen property.











There will be other ships, but we only have one conscience.











Handmaiden isn't known for her funny lines, but she does have the occasional zinger.



Since this is the first time Jesus has been able to return to a more civilized world, I figured it's time he bought some proper white Jesus robes. No, these aren't in the game, I had to add a mod for them.



Time to return to the Ebon Hawk and grab our things. It's too bad we gave our precious away to some random sleazy guy and stranded ourselves here, but that's the way life goes sometimes.



Jesus hears a noise.





This is Visas Marr, disciple to Darth Nihilus and the owner of the 2nd worse name in the game.





She's actually our first lightsaber opponent in the entire game.



One of the fun things about playing a gunslinger Exile is some fights that are normally hard become very easy with a gun. Other fights which were a complete pushover before are suddenly kind of tough.

Like this one.



Usually with a melee weapon or something, you can take Visas down in like, 1 or 2 rounds. She's so easy normally.

Unshielded and without armor, and using a gun like Jesus is, she's a bit of a problem. First, lightsabers deflect blasters. That's their thing. Second, she starts off right next to us in tight quarters, so we automatically get the close combat hit penalty for guns. Third, on Difficult mode she can do 70 or 90 damage in a round, which can 2-shot us.

You don't have to fight in her room; you can run away and fight on the whole ship. A more general strategy looks like this:



Basically doing figure 8's around the corridors of the ship while backing off after each shot.



Eventually your shots will get through and you get her down to half health, at which point the fight stops.



"I yield... master. It is as I heard through the Force."
"My life... for yours."
"I'm not going to kill you."



Now, it's been pointed out that she looks like this under the hood:



Which I found somewhat amusing.







"What's a Miraluka?"
"Yeah, they're a pretty secretive race. I heard that some of their kind become Jedi, but a Sith? That's... well, that's a new one."
"I'm not sure how you'd go about killing one. It'd be tricky."



What's so hard about killing one? She's just lying there: shoot her in the face.

"Just mentioning it - she looks like she's suffered enough wounds already... even after the beating you gave her."
"Is her kind rare?"



"Maybe she knows."
"Well, it *was* a planet of her people. If they see through the Force, who knows? If they're all Force Sensitive, maybe they all saw something through the Force that we can't see, and they left before it happened... or maybe it killed them."



"They claim to see on a higher plane than we do, you know, the whole Force thing. Makes me nervous."
"Is she going to be all right?"
"Well, some of her wounds are pretty bad - looks like she was already carrying her share of scars, though. I think she'll recover, yeah."
"If her condition changes, let me know - I didn't want to hurt her."



Well, duh. Crazy bitch just tried to kill Jesus.

"I won't harm her, if that's what you're asking."



"She should not be allowed to walk freely on the ship."



We scavenge Visas's busted lightsaber and find the 2nd piece we need to build our own.



I don't know whether to classify this as cut content or broken content; either way, the Visas fight in-game is really messed up. Most people don't notice because they kill her so quick that it's not a problem.

This is how it was suppose to go down:

1) You get on board the Ebon Hawk with your 2 party members
2) You discover the other member of your crew on board are either unconscious, or broken (droids). This is what the "What have you done to the crew?" line was about.
3) Walking into Visas's room, she Force Stuns your 2 party members, ala Darth Malak in KOTOR 1.
4) Then you have the 1 v 1 fight with Visas.
5) At half her hitpoints, she uses Force Sight to blind you.

As it is right now, the crew are all alive and well on board the ship; in fact if you wander into their area, they come over and help out beating on Visas. T3 and Bao-Dur's Remote are the most likely candidates because they wander all over the ship, but I've gone into the cargo hold before and Handmaiden started kicking the crap out of Visas.

Just to demonstrate how broken this fight can be, I capped a quick video of Jesus trying this fight in the centre console area. I was just trying to kite her around the holo-map when T3 comes out of nowhere and blasts the crap out of her with his Shock Arm, doing most of the damage in the fight.

Bonus Video - Visas Marr Fight